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What we do

Imagine a city, where nothing goes to waste. Every product’s life-cycle extends beyond what it is advertised for. Once the primary user has extracted its basic utility, it is sorted and processed in a decentralized, eco-friendly manner. There is little to nothing to be spared for the incinerator or landfills.

We are at the start of a revolution: we are beginning to consciously realize the impact of our lifestyles on the environment and greater social fabric. As a result, we rope in technology to build smart cities that are sustainable. The first step towards this is to close the loop through a circular economy. This is done through adopting the Zero Waste to Landfill model.

Achieving the Zero Waste to Landfill model involves a highly collaborative approach, which integrates multiple systems. Several factors come into play: technology adoption, infrastructure, delivery model, community engagement and governance, to name a few.

With proven business models enabled by technology, I Got Garbage is the go-to partner for any municipal body trying to prevent or tackle the waste management crisis in its city.

Empowering Waste-pickers

Every time a waste-picker picks up a recyclable from the garbage heap, they create 12 other work opportunities downstream.

Approximately 700 million Indians live in abject poverty. The challenge is to create as many jobs as are required to give them dignified livelihoods. These jobs have to tap into the potential of their existing skillset. Else, training needs to be provided to bridge the skills gap. Alongside this, 13 million young people join the workforce every year. Going by these trends, it is clear that the Indian economy requires job-creators instead of job-seekers.

These figures are set to increase as cities expand to accommodate rural migrants and swelling population. The new wave of industrial automation will only make the process of seeking traditional jobs harder. People will be forced to adopt a new mindset about their professions.

At I Got Garbage, we refer to this paradigm shift as the rise of Independent Entrepreneurship. Independent Entrepreneurs are born when people dip into their core competencies to create unique value propositions. These will in turn cater to the needs of connected communities of stakeholders, who have diverse interests and needs.

When a waste-picking IE picks up a recyclable, he creates at least 13 direct or indirect work opportunities downstream. In this sense, the IE waste-picker becomes a job-creator.

The future is about leveraging the core competencies of people such as the waste-picker, and enabling their transformation into professional waste management micro-businesses, designed around decentralized waste processing. Their waste management services to our cities will help us avoid resorting to landfills.

Technology

An integrated approach to solid waste management has three critical components:

1. Sustainable Operations

The application suite helps break the entire waste flow into micro-activities. These are captured and tracked through lightweight mobile- & tablet- based applications.

– Payments & Invoicing

– Waste Collection

– Vehicle Tracking (GPS)

– Facility Management

– Workforce Management

– Issue Management

– Sales & CRM

2. Community Engagement

Engaging with citizens, businesses, and volunteer groups, to sensitize and spread awareness and collectively bring about sustainable, scalable, social change.

– School Engagement Drives

– Online/Offline Campaigns

– Volunteering Drives

– Community Awareness & Training

– Community Leadership Programmes

3. Digital Governance

Providing governance solutions which offer visibility over the operations and impact of the waste management supply chain.

– Operations Reporting

– Performance Management

– Impact Reporting

– Analytics & Dashboards

– Contract Management

– Infrastructure Management

Citizens are involved and informed customers.

I Got Garbage’s community initiatives involve volunteers groups, apartment communities, and students to create awareness about solid waste management. In turn, the demand for waste management services is created, which generates leads for social enterprises to cater to.

I Got Garbage volunteer application allows volunteer to tag and register citizens willing to segregate waste and become a part of a larger movement towards a cleaner tomorrow.

Waste Management enterprises and their Social Partners need scalability.

The service aspect deals with the physical process of waste collection and its treatment down the stream. Indian cities are struggling to deal with the adverse effects of improper waste disposal: myriad diseases that plague citizens, clogged drains leading to flooding, tainted architecture & aesthetics which significantly reduce the quality of life in a city. When these processes are made efficient and transparent, it will ensure public health and well-being.

Complexities arise in the absence of administration and monitoring.

I Got Garbage enables Social Enterprises to remotely monitor field operations. An ordered series of governance layers is built into the reporting framework. This is customizable and can be tailored to meet actual field requirements.

Digital Governance helps create the right conditions to incentivize stakeholders to contribute to the system. Stakeholders include the waste-picking communities, municipal workers, and social enterprises working as service providers.

Furthermore, the insights drawn can inform government institutions about the bottlenecks that are preventing the ecosystem from working optimally. This in turn informs policy-making and the design of the enforcement mechanism.

Community Enagagement

Improper waste disposal in urban areas directly affects citizens. Open piles of stinking garbage spoils the ambience of neighbourhoods. They attract flies and rodents, threatening to spread vile diseases to children and the old alike. In short, improper waste disposal considerably decreases the quality of living.

In such circumstances, citizens usually have two responses – one of frustration with a seemingly ineffective bureaucratic system. The other response is that of intent – a powerful human emotion that is the beginning of ideation and all action. Intent can bring together citizens to form communities. This gets the momentum going for social change.

At IGG, we strongly believe in the role that communities play to create zero-waste-to-landfill smart cities. They are important stakeholders in bringing this initiative to fruition.

To tap into the power of community action, our team has designed an outreach program. The program engages citizens in meaningful dialogue and action towards effective urban waste management. Its components cover all the different stages of community involvement. In the beginning, citizens are educated about the issue, and made aware of the tools at hand to address the problem. They are then invited to volunteer, with the help of mobile applications.

This method helps engage a wider audience, snowballing into a movement. I Got Garbage’s Digital solutions are designed to empower citizen communities to take action. It enables them to organize sensitization drives and campaigns to spread the adoption of responsible waste management within targeted areas.

Ecosystem Creation

In most parts of India, waste management simply involves dumping garbage into landfills. However, effective waste management is a multifaceted system. The processes are intricate, and multiple stakeholders participate in the setup. Therefore, the solution lies in creating an ecosystem that enables opportunities for waste-picking services.

The Waste Management system is a Mess:

Waste management in Indian cities merely means dumping garbage into landfills. The job is often done by contractors, who are hired and paid by the ton. However, this service design is outdated.

In the present day, the nature of waste is increasingly complex. Cities are generating waste that includes more synthetic materials and e-waste than ever. Dumping them all together without segregation, promotes toxicity. In turn, our trash pollutes natural resources such as the soil, groundwater, and air. Moreover, with India’s dense population and scramble for real estate, land scarcity is yet another problem. Given these scenarios, indiscriminate dumping of garbage into landfills is not the smartest solution at hand.

Integrating Waste-Pickers into the Solution:

The role of the waste-picker is currently confined to the informal economy. They are socially shunned as a community, because of the nature of their jobs. This often makes them helpless to improve their livelihood and the lives of their families. The IGG ecosystem seeks to empower waste-pickers. Our solution engages them in formal relationships with various social and government institutions, thereby, validating their services to municipalities.

I Got Garbage works closely with stakeholders across the board, to streamline processes and create a multi-faceted system. A single platform houses the entire gamut of solutions with the waste-picker at its crux. This fosters scalability and strong partnerships among stakeholders.

Besides the waste-picker, the various stakeholders include citizens, NGOs and Social enterprises, governing bodies, itinerant buyers, sorters and other waste handlers.